The Truth About Ourselves
The human genome sequence has been completed and shows some surprising findings. Despite having one-third less genes than estimated, human beings are still very complex. With access to disease genes, medicine and diagnostics will be revolutionised. However, this will also raise ethical questions on cloning and genetic privacy.

Hope In Hell
Four weeks after the earthquake, Gujarat is still coming to terms with the devastation. True grit is emerging from the rubble but it will be some time before lives are rebuilt. INDIA TODAY's teams went out across these death zones, capturing stories which record this renewal.

Simmer Time

Profitable Loss
36 With over 90,000 employees opting for the VRS scheme, PSU banks are set to get over their problem of overstaffing. But is it going to make banks more competitive in this age of automation? Besides, it is also going to cost more than Rs 7,500 crore and will deprive the banks of skilled workers.

Paper Money

Spreading Terror
The attacks on Delhi's Red Fort,
the Srinagar airport and the city's police control room show the Lashkar-e-Toiba is increasingly catching the Indian security forces unawares-and emerging as the most daring terrorist group from Pakistan.

Face Off
It's David Vs Goliath as India play an Australian demolition squad at home. What makes the Aussies tick and how can India take them on?

Cricketwatch:
Ashley Mallett

EYECATHERS

That Empty Feeling

A wife, a mother, a woman scorned, she's playing them all on the big screen. But for Seema Biswas, best remembered as Phoolan Devi in Shekhar Kapur's Bandit Queen, it was time to kick that "feeling of emptiness I get on film sets at times" and try English theatre on the side. Now making her debut as a Bengali housewife in Going Solo 2-Living on the Edge, directed by Mumbai's Anahita Uberoi, Vikram Kapadia and Rahul da Cunha, Biswas is convinced theatre is her calling: "It has allowed me to hone my acting skills, though I've had to rework my thinking in English." All the thinking's helping.

The Son Also Rises

He's got the looks and the genes. So for Suchindra Bali, 26, son of yesteryear actress Vyjayantimala Bali, soon to debut in the Hindi film Aanch, films were only a "motivating script" away. What made it "easier" for the Chennai lad, cast opposite Sharbani Mukherjee, was not only "mother, who's been a good friend", but also the opportunity to work with "seniors" Nana Patekar and Raghuvir Singh. Says Bali: "I am learning from them." Mom's lessons are just not enough.

Lady in Waiting

It was the perfect way to begin. Playing a chief minister's daughter in actor Jackie Shroff's first home production. All except that the film in question, Grahan, launched in 1996, was model Anupama Varma's debut film and took a record five years to release. The film's just out, but the delay hasn't lowered the expectations from Varma. "Anupama could have gone on a signing spree in the interim period if she so wished," defends Grahan's co-producer Ayesha Shroff, "but she was so confident of this role that she decided to wait. We are more than happy with her performance." Better late than never.

Amma Calling

Ambika (left), Jayalalitha, Radha

It's a time-tested formula. Wooing voters with star power. In anticipation of the assembly elections in Tamil Nadu in April, the AIADMK is doing it too, getting yesteryear actors to dress up the poll campaigns and help at the hustings. Veteran actors Radha Ravi and S.S. Chandran are already in the party's fold. But the latest to pitch in from the Chennai film industry are former actors and sisters Ambika and Radha-and former No. 1 Khushboo-who called on J. Jayalalitha at her Poes Garden residence to announce their decision to finally join the party. Gushes an elated Ambika: "We sisters have always respected the ideals of the AIADMK and that of its leader." Anything to please Amma.

Compiled by Methil Renuka

MetroScape
Delhi On My Mind...
I'm very flattered to have this act of 'piracy' take place," laughs William Dalrymple, as extracts from his engrossing travelogue City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi were interpreted by photographer Agnes Montanari and art historian Nathalie Trouveroy in an exhibition.
more...

Looking Glass

Delhi: Restaurant

Delhi: Exhibition

Mumbai: Exhibition

"I was very much against the idea of India," says William Dalrymple, author, The City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi. In conversation with INDIA TODAY's Sonia Faleiro, he talks about his old girlfriend, Delhi and his "enormously exciting" next book, The White Moghuls in Interviews.